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Abstract
“Kuo Kuang Academy of Arts” (abbrev. KKAA) was founded, and eventually closed down, during the start and end of martial law in post-war Taiwan. One of the main factors for the establishment of KKAA was attributed to the unique approach to the development of the arts during the time known as the “military era”. KKAA was established by the Department of Defense, pushed for by General Wang Sheng, Director of the Political Warfare Bureau, and under the jurisdiction of the “Department of Defense Advanced Performing Arts Troupe”*, which was the highest performing arts unit in the Department of Defense. KKAA had evolved over the years of change in Taiwan’s political landscape and society in general, having made modifications to its structure, curriculum, and operations, changing its the goal of training variety talents, to the cultivation and preservation of talents in traditional Chinese Opera. Ultimately, KKAA was established and rose up to be the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts known today.
Although the history of KKAA only spanned over twenty-one short years (from 1978 to 1999), it had developed many known artists and celebrities, known as the “The Gang of Kuo Kuang”, which were the driving force of the performing arts circle in Taiwan for many years. In additional to the talent pool that KKAA successfully developed, KKAA was also responsible in paving the way to allow the promotion of the arts to hand over from the military to the private sector during its time.If we were to look back to the socioeconomic background during the time when KKAA was established, one would be able to delve deeply into discourse of many areas pertaining to the unique operations and undertaking of the school, such as the massive faculty strength, subsidized expenses by the government and the uncommon training approaches.
Moreover, during the middle of its term, when KKAA was merged with the “Tri-Service Performing Arts School”*, it added to its curriculum the Traditional Chinese Opera element, in addition to the original areas in drama, music, and dance, which was a process worthy of further investigation.
This research paper starts by relooking at the development of arts and culture in Taiwan forty years ago and examines the reason for the establishment of KKAA. By going over the changes in radio, television, movie and performing arts, which were initially all part of the military-controlled tools, this paper explores the how the Performing Troupes handled the operations of KKAA in developing the talents in performing arts, and extends into the different development trajectories in the different military divisions. Different categories of the training approaches were determined, which were performances created by soldiers for soldiers. Through this process, this paper further discusses the training approach distilled by KKAA from the Performing Arts Troupes, which developed into a unique “horizontal training mode” that cut across all areas in drama, music, dance, and variety performance, and examines the talents that were molded by this approach, including the later years post-merge with “Tri-Service Performing Arts School” where the element of Traditional Chinese Opera was included.Finally this paper evaluates the effectiveness of the talent development of KKAA and concludes if it had fulfilled its initial agenda of the Department of Defense.
In addition to literature review and discourse, this paper includes large amounts of data from fieldwork and surveys, going over student records from the first cohort to the fifteenth cohort, together with course schedules from thirty-five years ago, and in conclusion, this paper confirms that KKAA had fulfilled its mission set by the Department of Defense, and had created a significant impact in the society which remained till today.
* Non-official translation
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